The art of recession-dodging | Sarah Thornton

The super-rich are relying on bronze spiders, balloon flowers and abstract paintings to escape volatile times

In this troubled economy, Christie’s and Sotheby’s are doing a booming business. Christie’s year-end results were £3.6bn, up 9%. The percentage rise in sales of contemporary art was even better, at 22%. Sotheby’s doesn’t announce its complete results until the end of February, but its total auction sales increased by 14.5% with contemporary art up a significant 34%.

The gravity-defying surge of this segment of the art world is surprising, but only at first glance. The bulk of revenues comes from “ultra high net worth” individuals, many of whom operate at a level far above national economies. Even those who have taken blows in recent years remain super-rich. If they were worth £3bn in 2007, maybe they’re worth £2bn now. It’s not like they’re feeling the pinch.

The burden for the stinking rich is what to do with their money. There is currently no interest to be earned on cash, so they can’t leave it in the bank. The property market is nearly paralysed and, for these globetrotters, the drawback of real estate is that it is tied to specific currencies. A Mayfair flat sells in pounds, but the Francis Bacon painting that hangs on its wall could sell in Hong Kong dollars and take up residence on a yacht in the South Pacific. Like historic or extra-large diamonds, works by artists with international recognition are a hedge against volatile currency fluctuations.

Fifteen years ago financial advisers were not in the practice of recommending that rich people diversify their portfolios by buying art. Now it is the norm. While buying emergent art is high-risk, speculative investment, acquiring established masterpieces is perceived as the opposite – a back-up in hard times. If all goes wrong in the world, if the eurozone cracks, the Middle East erupts in war, and a tsunami hits Manhattan, that rare, portable 1964 Marilyn by Andy Warhol will still be worth something.

The auction houses are fostering a globalisation of taste with the help of galleries with international outposts such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and now White Cube. While wealthy Belgians used to spend their money differently from wealthy Indonesians, this is decreasingly the case.

During the contemporary sales that will take place in London on 14 and 15 February, bidders from four continents are likely to converge on many lots, including a classic red squeegee-blurred abstract painting by Gerhard Richter (estimated at £2.5m-£3.5m at Sotheby’s) and a black and white canvas by Christopher Wool emblazoned with the giant word “FOOL” (expected to fetch £2.9m-£3.9m at Christie’s). Both works are tipped to exceed their estimates. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are superlative marketers who are getting better at funnelling demand for objects by a small group of well-tested artist brands.

A decade ago, few would have predicted that the most insatiable buyer of record-priced contemporary art would be the Qatari royal family (who are sponsoring the forthcoming Damien Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern). In 2007 they bought Hirst’s Lullaby Spring pill cabinet for almost £9.65m, then the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist.

Last year they bought the most expensive contemporary lots at both auction houses, paying £24m for a Roy Lichtenstein at Christie’s and £39m for a Clyfford Still at Sotheby’s. Behind the scenes, they have paid even higher prices in private transactions – most recently, as revealed on Friday, a gobsmacking £160m for Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players

But the family is not just stockpiling; they seem to love their art. Sheikha al-Mayassa, the emir’s daughter, was apparently at a loss for what to give her mother for Mother’s Day. She settled on a nine-metre-high bronze spider by Louise Bourgeois. I wonder what her husband will get her for Valentine’s Day? A Jeff Koons balloon flower? No, silly me, they already have one. Needless to say, a coup in Qatar would be a tragedy for the art market.

It is worth noting that Sotheby’s and Christie’s 10 highest-spending families may be responsible for as much as 10% of their revenue. This teeny elite includes the Qataris and, most likely, Russian oligarchs, US hedge-fund managers, Chinese billionaires, and Europeans with relatively “old money”. These people use Christie’s and Sotheby’s as a one-stop shop in the way that certain members of the British middle class rely on John Lewis.

Indeed, they don’t only acquire paintings from the auction houses but rugs, furniture, lighting, silverware, jewellery, watches, books, wine and beach houses. If these 10 players dropped out of the market, the auction houses’ figures wouldn’t look so hot. As they say in the business, the market is “thin” at the top.

But the biggest spenders are unlikely to abandon the market because, for them, art is more than an investment. It is a fast track to social acceptability and part of their claim to be the distinguished cream of the crop. For the rest of us, it pays to remember that art is about cultural enlightenment: and that flows from contemplating the work, not owning it.